Very Odd Clouds

I’m no meteorologist, but I look at clouds a lot and pay attention and I like to think I’ve got an above average grasp of the way things work, so when I see something new and different and odd I tend to pay attention. And take pictures.

I didn’t say I always take good pictures. But in this case I wasn’t sure how long the phenomenon would be stable and visible, so ignore the wires and the puffy clouds in the foreground, and look at the nine or ten horizontal, parallel (-ish) lines of clouds beyond, somewhere out over Ventura County.

Except for at airshows where there are multiple planes in formation burning smoke oil, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this.

I actually considered at first that it might be from aircraft flying in formation, but the smoke trails there are never this thick.

After a couple of minutes it looked like a burst of high altitude winds started to sweep across part of the lines on the right side, disbursing and scattering the lines.

It’s still linear on the left (and further to the right, but it was tough to see through the foreground clouds) but in this middle section everything was getting mixed and smeared out across the sky.

Going to research this online is an adventure. First of all, searching for “clouds that look like plantation shutters” will get a psychotic and psychedelic AI essay that made *NO* damn sense at all. Totally wacko, and not in a good way.

Secondly, searching for “clouds in horizontal, parallel lines” is a little bit more productive. These are apparently “altostratus undulatus” clouds. They don’t seem particularly uncommon. Something about them this day made them stand out and grab my attention.

And I had a camera nearby!